A Worthy Fellow

 

    One day in deep regret,

With no affection upon myself –

I declared;

     ‘I have not done enough,

     There is yet more I could do upon the world.’

 

Is that you my friend?

Is that you?

 

     I shouldn’t have gone,

Shouldn’t have left,

Should have kept the two twenty-six

SLR rifle for mine own and robbed -

The four by two to drag again the barrels

     And,

Are you cringing again,

 

Is that you my friend?

 

     I am aiming high,

High on a twenty-one gun salute;

The Sergeant Major silently calling time

As our shoulders shudder in unison

With tears and,

 

Is that you my friend, is that you??

 

      Are you up for a Fathers talk

A mothers talk??

A mothers fear a mothers wish,

     Is that you in battle my friend,

Is that you dying for a love,

An acceptance society negates at glee,

 

Is that you my friend?

 

England,

This England,

A rich tapestry of deaths

That belie the overwhelming feelings of waste

     And,

 

Is that you and I –

Prepared to die for politicians,

Prepared to spill slippery - redded blood

And be forgotten among  the carnage,

To be bits of meat, bits of torso, lost limbs

And lost sanity?

 

Is the death you face - my friend,

Is it you?

 

     What waits,

What waits -

Beneath these wings,

Be not no terra firma,

It is not the constitution of

Ladies, or Gentlemen,

     For it scowls,

Tells you to do more and more

     And more;

     Its translucent architecture

Appealing the riches that

You and I will never attain,

     And the only revelation,

Be the knowingness that,

Her gain, is your loss, our loss.

 

Is that you my friend?

Is that you?

 

If so, find a hill,

Breathe a twilight hour upon its peak,

And claim yourself again.

 

Michael J Waite 22nd June 2016.